2 March 2013 — Strategic Culture Foundation
Kerry Brings Image of Dapper Diplomacy to Ugly Face of Washington’s Imperialism
02.03.2013 | 00:00 | Finian CUNNINGHAM
Any illusions about a possible change in direction for American foreign policy were blown away this week with Kerry’s visit to Europe. And it was Kerry himself who blew away such illusions with his own words. The US secretary of state may have sounded multi-lingual and looked urbane in his pinstripe suit, with all its hints of diplomacy, but what he had to say on the issues of Iran and Syria, and by extension Russia, revealed Kerry to be a consistent operator of the same openly militarist agenda that has become such a hallmark of post-9/11 Washington…
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Yoani María Sánchez – Blogger on State Department and CIA Service
01.03.2013 | 11:52 | Nil NIKANDROV
All Western agencies joined together reporting the news that Yoani María Sánchez Cordero, a 37 years old Cuban blogger, got a permission to leave Cuba. She had tried to get the permission for five years, now she got it. Sánchez was kind of frustrated that her leaving was far from being an event in the focus of public attention. No dramatic actions: no interrogations, no searches, there was nothing to be used for denigration of the «Castro brothers regime». Yoanni’s 80 days trip is to include ten states, including Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the United States. Brazil was the country to start…
Obama’s Military Presence in Niger: Uranium Control and Tuareg Suppression
01.03.2013 | 00:00 | Wayne MADSEN
President Obama’s military incursion into Niger, ostensibly to establish a drone base to counter «Al Qaeda» and other Islamist guerrilla activity in neighboring Mali, has little to do with counter-insurgency and everything to do with establishing U.S. control over Niger’s uranium and other natural resources output and suppressing its native Tuareg population from seeking autonomy with their kin in northern Mali and Algeria. The new drone base is initially located in the capital of Niamey and will later be moved to a forward operating location expected to be located in Agadez in the heart of Tuareg Niger…
The Return of Empires (III)
28.02.2013 | 00:00 | Dmitry MININ
The dissociation of the United States from a number of international problems by shifting these problems onto allies and delegating authority to them, a result of the United States‘ «imperial overheating», is based on the currently popular concept of «smart power», the very emergence of which suggests that America’s former sources of power have been exhausted…
Kosovo: Outpost in Battle for Universal Caliphate
28.02.2013 | 00:00 | Pyotr ISKENDEROV
It’s a possibility the next parliamentary elections in Kosovo may take place this year bringing about real changes in Europe. It’ll be the first time the Islamic Movement to Unite, or LISBA, its Albanian-language acronym, will take part in elections. The party was registered in February 2013. It has already announced the launching of a large scale campaign going beyond the Kosovo boundaries to encompass the whole Muslim world. This is the first out-and-out Islamist party in the Balkans that has set the goal of making the Balkans a part of Islamic Caliphate…
Bulgaria: Recent Events
27.02.2013 | 00:00 | Vadim VIKHROV
Bulgaria is facing the wave of the largest mass protests in the last 16 years provoked by price hikes. So the resignation of Boyko Borisov government has been expected. It was this very government and big time players from Washington who made the events unfold this way… Perhaps Bulgaria doesn’t even realize it has become a country with limited sovereignty as a result of the United Sates diplomatic pressure…
Post-Legal America and the World Order: Drone Killing Today, Cyber Bully Tomorrow?
26.02.2013 | 10:00 | David KERANS
Even the most casual observer of international affairs since the turn of the century is familiar with the willingness of the government of the United States to bypass international law under circumstances it alone determines. The war of aggression launched against Iraq under false pretenses ten years ago this month may be the first example that comes to mind, but there are numerous others…
The Return of Empires (II)
26.02.2013 | 00:00 | Dmitry MININ
The process already taking shape in the world of consolidating «larger spaces», and the return of the empires of by-gone eras may not, at first glance, seem to respond to the spirit of the times. However, we are living in an age which, in view of its uncertainty in people’s minds, is indiscriminate to such an extent that it is no stranger to the most improbable policy prescriptions. The world is in a state of interregnum in which, as Zygmunt Bauman says, «change is the only constant, and the unknown – the only certainty»; in this world, Europe remains a battlefield, but nowadays the battle is between a Westphalian model of sovereign states and new forms of supranational governance…
The Return of Empires (I)
25.02.2013 | 00:00 | Dmitry MININ
The recent expeditions of the French in Africa clearly smack less of neoimperialism than they do neocolonialism, and have prompted many to wonder whether the events are the start of a new cycle of world politics in which an outgoing unipolarity is perhaps being replaced by a forthcoming multipolarity not hailed by everyone, or something different, something new or maybe a repeat of history, but in new packaging? Maybe something that would allow, for example, the United States «to leave without actually leaving», to continue implementing their global plans in a more complex system of interstate relations? If so, then the imperial projects and vassal relations of by-gone eras that had seemingly vanished forever will turn out to be much in demand…
Iraq’s Fragmentation and the Turkish Overreach
24.02.2013 | 00:00 | Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR
…Ankara is offering to Erbil the honeypot of vastly increased revenues from oil exports through Turkey from northern Iraq and flourishing Turkish trade and investments in Kurdistan… Clearly, Turkey hopes that in the fullness of time, its much bigger economy would integrate and assimilate Kurdistan… Simply put, Turkish regional policies are increasingly feeding into the Shia-Sunni tensions fostered by Saudi Arabia and Qatar across the Middle East… To be sure, Iraq is also becoming a turf where Turkey’s rivalries with Iran are playing out and Ankara resents the Baghdad-Tehran axis supporting the Syrian regime. (On Tuesday Iraqi cabinet approved Tehran’s proposal to construct a 1500-kilometre natural gas pipeline connecting Iran’s giant South Pars fields to Syria and other export markets via Iraqi territory)…
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The New Dark Age 